


the first step

by Molnija



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Canon Compliant, I don't even know how to tag this, M/M, Pre-Relationship, i guess, it can probably be read as platonic????, that wasn't my intention but that's also nice i guess
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-25
Updated: 2016-07-25
Packaged: 2018-07-26 13:36:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,679
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7575937
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Molnija/pseuds/Molnija
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The door slams shut and leaves them in complete darkness.</p><p>“Okay, what the fuck,” Oikawa murmurs, thankfully not too close to him, though the storage room has seemed pretty small from what Tobio saw before being shoved into it.</p><p>His phone buzzes in his pocket and when he takes it out, the message showing up on the screen under Daichi’s name simply reads, <em>sort it out</em>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the first step

**Author's Note:**

> these two are the people you should just lock in the same room for an hour or two to solve most of their problems tbh ... though whether or not they solved these problems is anoter question entirely ...
> 
> this was super fast and is therefore probably riddled with mistakes, but I was in ~the mood~ and I've long given up trying to fight that ... I kinda ran out of steam towards the end though. so now it's this. I seem to do that a lot lately.
> 
> dialogue used to be my expertise but I feel like I'm kinda rusty even though I have written pretty dialogue-heavy stuff not too long ago wtf

The door slams shut and leaves them in complete darkness.

“Okay, what the fuck,” Oikawa murmurs, thankfully not too close to him, though the storage room has seemed pretty small from what Tobio saw before being shoved into it.

His phone buzzes in his pocket and when he takes it out, the message showing up on the screen under Daichi’s name simply reads, _sort it out_.

Thankfully, it shows Tobio at least a bit of his surroundings, though the cold white light gives the room an eerie look. When he tries to light out the room, he finds Oikawa leaning against a mat trolley, arms crossed, eyebrows furrowed. The look he receives when the other notices it could probably kill.

“This is your fault, isn’t it?” Oikawa says. “All _I_ did was search for the training regimen that’s supposed to be here somewhere, like Iwa-chan told me to.”

Tobio continues looking for … What even? A light switch? Probably, he decides. “I didn’t do anything! I don’t even want to be here! Someone pushed me!”

“Right. Next thing you’ll tell me is that you just got a message saying something like ‘sort it out’ with no explanation. This isn’t a movie, Tobio-chan.”

Tobio stops moving and frowns at Oikawa. The moment he opens his mouth he receives a sigh.

“I can’t believe they did that to us.”

Is there no switch? That’d be highly impractical. His phone is almost out of battery, and who knows for how long they’re going to be stuck here?

At least the teams will probably get them out before the practice match started. They wouldn’t play without them. They wouldn’t, right? They need them, right? Right?

He presses the _call_ button on Daichi’s contact as aggressively as anyone could manage but before he knows it, the call ends with a mocking _doot, doot, doot_.

He’s stuck.

In a small storage room.

Without lights.

Alone.

With _Oikawa_.

His phone dies in his hand, the company’s logo flashing one last time as if to laugh at him before darkness settles around them once more.

“I for one have nothing to say to you.” Tobio thinks he can hear the pout in Oikawa’s voice.

Why are they even locked in here? It isn’t as if anything unusual has happened. If anything, they’ve made a huge effort of ignoring each other so far, compared to any other time they’ve met. So what gives?

He sinks to the floor with a frustrated groan, leaning against what he thinks is a paper box filled with something that’s hard enough to support him.

“I mean, what do they think they’re achieving? For us to strike up a friendly conversation? _Please_ , whoever did it should know me better. Why should I talk to you?”

“You’re talking to me right now though,” Tobio mumbles.

There’s a moment of silence before Oikawa says, slightly quieter than before, “Just wanted to make that clear. I’ll shut up now.”

And shut up he does, for about a minute, before Tobio hears him shift and, if the sounds are any indication, heave himself onto the mats. “They’ll play without us,” he whispers.

“No way!” Tobio returns. “Especially you! You’re the captain!”

“Oh, you don’t know a thing, Tobio-chan. When we’re not on the court everybody only listens to Iwa-chan.”

“I wouldn’t listen to you either.”

“Don’t try to hurt me like that, I know it isn’t true!” Oikawa lets himself fall on the mats, at least Tobio thinks he does. It does sound like it. As long as his eyes aren’t used to the dark, there’s really no other way to find it out. “You idolized me back in junior high. All like ‘Oikawa-senpai, teach me your serve’ and ‘Oikawa-senpai, what would you do in that situation’ and …”

Tobio feels his face heat up and for a second, he’s thankful for the dark. “I never called you senpai,” is the first thing he manages to say.

“You should have, you were my precious kouhai after all!” Oikawa sounds legitimately offended. “I heard you call that baldy from your team senpai and your libero too, so why not me?”

“Weren’t you supposed to shut up?”

“Oooh, did I hit a nerve? No need to be embarrassed, Tobio-chan, you can talk to me about anything.”

“You literally said like not even five minutes ago …”

“I’m taking it back!” A faint chuckle. “Anything that makes you blush is fair game.”

“You’re a terrible person,” Tobio says.

“I am your light in the dark, thank you very much.” He can’t even tell whether Oikawa means it.

He shoots an angry glare in the direction of the silhouette slowly beginning to resemble the boy lying on the mat trolley. “More like a … dark … shadow thing … with rain.”

“Wow, you’re a terrific poet,” Oikawa says, dry as a desert.

“S-shut up, you know what I mean!” Once again, he silently thanks the room for being so damn dark. He’s sure he’s about the colour of a ripe cherry by now.

“Still doesn’t mean I believe you.”

They’re quiet for a moment, Tobio playing with his fingers to get anything to do, really. The blush doesn’t fade though. If he had anything to distract himself with, it might.

Then, out of reasons he doesn’t quite understand himself, he murmurs, “You didn’t even like me, you probably would’ve been annoyed.”

Oikawa hums before saying, “Maybe. Maybe not. I mean, we can redo all of that good stuff now …”

“You still hate me though.”

For a few seconds, neither of them says a word, but it feels much longer before Oikawa finally breaks the silence. “I wouldn’t say I _hate_ you. Yeah, you’re annoying and incompetent and insufferable and …”

“How long are you gonna go on?”

“And all around a general pain in the ass to deal with _but_ you’re cute. And when you play volleyball I can go out and say stuff like ‘look at my precious kouhai, guess where he got those skills from’!” He makes a drawn-out hand gesture into the air like he’s trying to paint a rainbow or something.

“Are you trying to say you’re like my parent?” If so, Tobio really has to consider asking someone to adopt him. Like Daichi. Although … Daichi was the one who shut them in, so probably not Daichi. Maybe Ennoshita.

“No way, I wouldn’t be able to deal with a problem child like you.”

“ _Problem child?_ ”

“Plus what good would it do me to have a son who’s better than me?”

Tobio is shut up by the undertone in Oikawa’s voice. Still mocking and fake-offended, but … He can’t particularly be called a good judge of character, but he’s pretty sure he heard something more sober in it, too.

Before he knows it, he’s whispering, “I’m not, though. I never was. Probably never will be.”

Because it’s true. Because no matter how many times he might win against him, Oikawa is always going to be that one unreachable rival. Tobio knows he’s good, obviously, but he has a long way to go until he can reach that sheer _aura_ Oikawa has around him whenever he plays, and by then the other will have advanced, too.

“Don’t try to humour me, Tobio-chan, I’ve accepted it long ago.”

He’s confused because Oikawa sounds like he _means_ that. But there’s no way, right? This whole time it has always been his confidence that gave them the problems they had in the first place, at least he always assumed that. If that was all just a farce, then where do they even stand? What’s the point?

“I don’t care what you think,” he snaps, suddenly feeling the urge to punch something. “I’m the one who has to deal with you.”

“Well, I’m the one who has to deal with _you_! Why are we even talking?”            

“That’s what I’ve been asking all along.”

They settle into another long moment of silence, but this time the air around them is more tense, more uncomfortable, more unbearable. His back is starting to hurt, but he doesn’t dare move. Any noise would be too loud right now.

Part of him wants to apologize, but he doesn’t even know what for. He hasn’t said anything wrong after all, but then again, when he thinks about it, neither has Oikawa. He blames it on the fact that they have never gotten along. Maybe it’s destined after all and all of this is for nothing. It probably was from the start. Daichi’s not going to be happy.

It’s Oikawa who speaks again. “Let’s just say we agree to disagree.”

“Fine.”

“ _Fine._ ”

It doesn’t feel fine at all.

“I’d say let’s settle this on the court but …” A vague gesture towards the heavy door.

They’re probably out there warming up right now. Damn it. Playing would really help him relieve some of this tension right now, but it seems he can forget that.

“This is probably all Iwa-chan’s fault,” Oikawa continues. “He’s been going on about this for ages. I can’t count how many times he’s told me that I should just talk to you and now look at what it got us. We should’ve just shut up.”

Tobio wants to agree, but the more he thinks about it, the less he can quite bring himself to. Not because being called better than Oikawa by his rival himself is, in hindsight, really uplifting … Okay, maybe because of that, too. But mostly he’s pretty sure he would’ve never heard any of this without this, for better or worse. Is he still slightly pissed? Well, yeah. But if they’re ever going to try and get along, they would have had this conversation anyways, he figures. It’s pretty much the first step.

Not that he ever _wanted_ to take that step. He would have been perfectly content with … Whatever they were before this. Maybe they’ll be that again once they finally get released from this place.

He finds he doesn’t really like that idea, though.

“I don’t think we should have,” he murmurs, but if Oikawa heard it, he doesn’t tell.

**Author's Note:**

> will they ever get out? wILL THEY WE MAY NEVER KNOW
> 
> thanks for reading!! ♥ hit me up on http://akaashi-tooru.tumblr.com/ and shout to me about Oikage. or Akaoi. or any other ship, really. especially rarepairs. I need all the rarepairs


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